


bandages

by FireHeartAW



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, M/M, Major Character Injury, angst with an ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29762643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireHeartAW/pseuds/FireHeartAW
Summary: In which Langa takes on Adam's tournament, and faces the consequences of acting on recklessness.But in this moment of acceptance, he hears the whir of Joe passing him towards one of the more dangerous corners of the track, watches as he lifts off the ground, pushes off the wall and continues on. And that’s when he should feel his first real drip of fear as the offending corner looms closer, but he has to win, he has to do this. He has something to prove, doesn't he? So he follows the same path Joe took, soaring into the air towards the rock wall that’s curved like a cresting wave.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 10
Kudos: 101





	bandages

**Author's Note:**

> Well I watched episode 8 after the pain that was episode 7 and just needed to get something out. I love these boys so much and just want them to figure things out! 
> 
> And I realize that by next weekend, this could be very non-canon, but writing something was healing - even with this being angst. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy <3

The moped sputters beneath his hands, crackling loudly against the thoughts plaguing him since he had left dinner with his mom. 

“I think it’s best if you were honest with your feelings,” she’d advised. And Langa inhaled sharply, like the air in the brief moment of space between an ollie and the ground, the breadth between it catching in his throat at the implication of the ‘her’ she’d enthusiastically mentioned. 

“Her?” He had questioned back, his mind conjuring up only thoughts of red hair, golden eyes, and feral scraped up smiles. Only thoughts of the boy he’s chased after on hand tightened trucks through the neighborhoods by school. 

But the words that fell from Reki’s mouth days ago still sit heavily in his veins, the weight of missing someone palpable even in the curl of his fingertips on the handlebars of the moped – as if that part of him too, was missing calloused fingers, and the warm smiles that held him together whenever he fell apart trying a new trick. 

“You and I aren’t a good match anymore,” Reki whispered to the rain, as if the curtain of water between them could drown out the sentence, drown out words Langa never knew he could hate so much. 

It’s been days since those words have been said, yet they still chase him down the dark path towards S. A path that was dark before, yes, but used to be considerably warmer – usually spent with Reki pressed up against his back as he drove them towards the dangerous spiraling track he’s come to love. But some of that warmth remains even now, and he knows it's the excitement of possibly seeing Reki there. All of this considering the familiar ramp he saw coming out from Reki’s open window, the sight only seen on nights that he met up with Reki to head to S. 

Parking the moped swiftly, he starts to amble through the growing crowd of competitors for Adam’s tournament, but his eyes are only looking for red hair tinged by fluorescent lights. But as the crowd continues to gather, all he can manage is to find one familiar face – hoping that maybe they’ve seen him. So he jogs towards the head of dark green hair, heading closer to the stage where competitors will be announced. 

“Joe!” He shouts, and he should ask him if he’s prepared, ask him if he’s ready to possibly compete against Adam. But his mouth moves faster than the rational part of his brain, and he asks what's been on the forefront of his mind for days now. “Have you seen Reki?” 

Joe’s eyebrows arch higher onto his forehead, a little hint of a smile playing at his lips. “Nope, he’s here?” 

“Probably,” Langa answers, recalling the open window, the pull of competition, the love of the sport. Honestly, there’s no way Reki could stay away from this, scared or not. And Langa hopes that maybe Reki is here for an entirely different reason, and not for the lure of the sport, but for one that lingers in his chest. 

“I see,” Joe mumbles, the smile at his lips growing with an expression Langa can’t quite place – but it almost looks like the kind that someone gets when they’ve gotten their way and concern grows alongside his nerves. 

As Langa’s about to ask if Joe has seen Reki in the past couple days, the entrance to S goes dark, just briefly. Suddenly cracks ring out into the air as explosives on the stage signal Adam’s entrance, soaring above them all on his skateboard amongst smoke in the beam of red lights. 

“All you fools who love skateboarding,” Adam calls, voice animated as he greets the crowd. “As of now, I would like to determine the one human who loves skating the most!” 

Langa’s mind wanders to one boy in particular. Because he can’t even imagine himself as the one human Adam is looking for, he’s sure there’s no one out there that could possibly match the enthusiasm for skateboarding that Reki has. So he lets Adam’s speech fade to the background as his blue eyes scan the members of S, so many of them have their eyes set on the stage, set on Adam – just like he did when he had skated against him, as if he has some magnetic pull that’s impossible to get away from. 

But for Langa that spell is broken, and sure, he wants to beat him – but there isn’t the lingering need to be in his presence anymore, not after he realized who it was at S that was actually pulling him in. And for a fleeting moment he thinks he sees a hint of red hair peeking out from a green hood, sitting alone at the edge of the track, eyes trained to the clay colored dirt he’s twisting his shoes in. 

And he wants to run, wants to skate, wants to do anything to close this distance that only seems to be growing between them. He’d jump it, if it was a real gap, he’d do anything to get Reki back, to never break a promise with him again. But someone steps into his field of view, and in that brief moment of time, the boy alone on the tracks edge has disappeared, as if on purpose, into the crowd. 

Langa watches as Shadow competes first, beating Harry at a pace much faster than his usual. This is usually the time that the fire of competition would start to rise through his feet up to his hands, the call of the track beckoning him to come and face the challenge. But as his name is called to compete against Joe, it feels as though ice has returned to his field of vision. Like he’s back on a slope by himself, snowboard beneath his feet with nothing but ice-laden trees to keep him company. 

But vaguely he wonders, if here amongst the metaphorical trees of the crowd, if Reki’s looking at him, watching as he prepares to do what he promised he wouldn’t. But it almost feels hypocritical, for the most reckless person he knows to ask him to not be reckless – because if anything, the most impulsive thing he’s done so far, is fall for his best friend. 

He listens as Joe begins to speak just to him, not for the crowd, not for the show of it – but for him, as if he can see through the problems Langa’s facing. 

“Skaters are really stupid,” he starts, and all Langa can do is watch through the tendrils of his hair. “It’s not like you get money from this, or like you get praised from society. If you have one slip, you get a bad injury, but you can’t stop it.” 

Briefly, Langa has flashes of Reki’s injury, of Reki flying through the air and collapsing to the ground. And maybe Reki’s not one of the stupid ones Joe’s talking about, considering he let that injury dictate that skating wasn’t worth the fear of it all. 

“You have to say you’re stupid to do so,” Joe continues, glancing sideways at Langa as he answers. 

“You say it like you’re having fun,” Langa notes, and Joe’s responding smile is enough to confirm it. 

His deep voice responding kindly, as if to say, I see you – we’re the same. “I’m stupid, too,” he chuckles, gesturing to the carved mountainside around them. “‘S’ is simply competing to see who is more of an idiot.”

“Then, am I an idiot, too?” Langa asks, but he knows the answer, Reki had said as much during their fight, even without the exact words. 

Joe laughs harder, gripping his skateboard tighter with an audible crunch on the ground below them, “a huge idiot!” But Langa watches as his face softens and then twists, like a memory has just come to the surface as he looks to the stage. 

“You’re an idiot,” Joe whispers, “making friends, fights, making up…,” 

The words hit harder, like the ice from the slopes of his memories has carved it’s way into his bloodstream. But the way Joe is talking doesn’t sound like it’s to Langa, nor about him, it sounds like it’s about them, collectively. 

“You end up doing everything through skateboarding,” Joe claims, and Langa feels the ice thaw with the impression of a ramp silhouetted by a setting sun. Of a boy, his friend, soaring through the rays of warmth that settled in Langa’s chest everytime they practiced together, everytime Reki showed him something new. And it’s Reki’s warm smile that sits heavy in his heart now, like he took the world, took Reki’s skateboarding for granted – because to him Reki _is_ skateboarding, and skateboarding is everything. 

The air around them shifts, the spark of competition coming to life as the crowd grows restless. “There’s someone I’d like to punch,” Joe grits out. Distantly, in those trees of Langa’s mind, he agrees. There’s someone he’d like to punch too, and the memory of him letting Reki walk away with a rain-soaked shirt and untrue words comes back. Someone he’d like to beat, as the man on the stage plays with their fate. Something he’d like to prove, as the dirt colored slopes of S open up before him. 

As the first light turns red before them, Joe continues, “tell him to wake up, so I’m gonna win.” 

And Langa should be scared, he should have that fear that Reki shouted into the night come back to him, that recklessness he promised not to succumb to pull him back from the track’s edge. But he feels his brow furrow as the tension in his muscles burns against his board, asking him gently, to set the world on fire, as if Snow could do that. 

The gravel kicks behind them, sputtering under spinning tires and wind whipped hair as they press forward. The green light releases them from their hold into the awaiting, tumbling grip of S. And that wind feels good as the cold air burns against his cheeks, with a kiss of welcome back to the danger, with open arms to the impulse he resorted to when his dad passed. 

And maybe that's why he chases this danger, because if he’s lost Reki too, he might as well lose him swiftly, passing by their potential on tires going too fast and corners that cut too sharp. But in this moment of acceptance, he hears the whir of Joe passing him towards one of the more dangerous corners of the track, watches as he lifts off the ground, pushes off the wall and continues on. And that’s when he should feel his first real drip of fear as the offending corner looms closer, but he has to win, he has to do this. He has something to prove, doesn't he? So he follows the same path Joe took, soaring into the air towards the rock wall that’s curved like a cresting wave. _Prove it_ , his body calls, and then it breaks. 

He hears, no, feels, the crack of something shattering. _Is it his board?_ He wonders briefly, as the sounds of muffled sirens fill the air. _Will Reki make me a new one?_ He hopes, as gravel punctures his palms and finds its way under his nails. Something akin to water trickles down his face, thicker though, as it begins to blur his vision. And he must be hallucinating, must be dreaming, because through the fog of it all he hears one voice and footsteps that are moving quickly across concrete and dirt. 

“LANGA,” the familiar voice screams, like a sunburst through a winter’s blizzard, far away and out of reach. “Langa,” the voice whispers closely, shaky in it’s exit through lips he’s looked at far too many times. He feels more liquid drip down onto his hands, and he watches, distantly through eyes that don’t feel like his own as they’re lifted to those lips and he wants to question, wants to ask why Reki is crying with tears that trickle down the sides of his palms. 

And somewhere deep in his legs there's a burn that can’t be ignored, one he’s felt maybe once before in his life after he went too far, did too much to prove to the world that he didn’t fear the death that took his father. 

“Should’ve listened to you,” he sighs, eyelids heavy as he falls closer to the earth below. But arms catch him on the way and pull him close, and a warmth blooms through him despite the uncontrollable shaking he feels in his fingertips that reminds him of the freezing cold of snow white slopes. 

_Hold my hands again, Reki. Put me together with bandages and smiles like you had before._

And as those arms hold him gently, and as red strands of hair become his field of view, he succumbs to the darkness vignetting vision. But words follow him through the lull of this painful night, words he’s heard before as he held the hands of the sun.

“I’ve got you.”

And then he falls into the solar eclipsed darkness of his mind into the hands of what being reckless promised.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive shoutout to my main girl [ChaoticFriendly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticFriendly/pseuds/ChaoticFriendly) for letting me send her literally anything to be beta'd, even if its a fandom she's not a member of yet!! Love you, don't know what I'd do without you!!
> 
> Let's hope by next weekend these boys can be happy again. Thank you all for reading <3 
> 
> If you want to come hangout/yell at me on twitter where I talk about haikyuu and now sk8, you can find me here: [@fireheart_aw](https://twitter.com/fireheart_aw)


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